LONDON: Discovery rewrites start of women’s movement

A historian in northern England says he has found a 370-year-old book proclaiming that women are better than men, a volume he calls an early voice for women’s empowerment.

Alan Davies, heritage officer in Wigan, said he found the 182-page book in a town hall vault, where he had been hunting for something else.

The book, “Womans Worth,” carries the subtitle “A treatise proveinge by sundrie reasons that woemen do excell men.”

No author’s name is given. Davies said the spellings, writing style and binding appeared to date the book to the 1630s.

“Most people think of the women’s movement emerging around the start of the 20th century,” he said.

“This book could prove very important. Events might have been brought forward by a few generations if it had been published,” he said.

Venezuela: Military takes new hit; generals die in crash

Venezuela’s new air force commander and three other generals died in a helicopter crash, officials said Saturday, adding to the blows suffered by a military already split by a failed coup last week.

Even as President Hugo Chavez tries to reassert the control over Venezuela that he briefly lost last weekend, the country’s largest labor federation on Saturday announced plans for a massive march on May Day.

The same union sponsored a march that led to the April 11 coup.

Gen. Luis Alfonso Acevedo was among 10 airmen who were killed Friday when their helicopter crashed in forests, likely due to bad weather, the military said. Also killed were Brig. Gens. Pedro Torres Fino, the air force operations commander, Rafael Quintana Bello, personnel chief, and Julio Cesar Ochoa, who worked for the general staff.

Belarus: Economic reformers arrested for protest

More than 100 protesters seeking economic reform were arrested after police moved in to disperse marchers in the Belarus capital of Minsk.

At the unauthorized march, more than 300 people gathered Friday to demand higher wages and other improvements to Belarus’ struggling, Soviet-style economy.

Protesters also demanded the resignation of autocratic President Alexander Lukashenko. “It’s Impossible to Live Like This,” was their rallying slogan.